Best in Class: Third iCraft's Sellers' Bootcamp Starts November 1

Just in time for this most important holiday selling season, the third iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp will kick off on November 1, 2009 with a bang! The www.iCraft.ca site is an international selling venue exclusive to handmade items.

Designed this time specifically for the holiday selling season, this FREE online sellers' marketing class goes for 28 days (weekends off) and has daily marketing and advertising assignments (free and low-cost methods) to promote your shop that will take only 30 minutes a day.

What I like about the class is that it makes me accountable to prioritize what will give me the biggest bang for my efforts. This will be the third iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp I have taken and I have to tell you that I come away each time with new strategies. It is well worth my time for a third one!

The program leader is Christine Skaley (PillowThrowDecor) who comes from a 26-year career in sales, sales training, strategic planning, and instructional teaching. She is a fabulous motivator and leader and will lead us all to organized time management, marketing and advertising best suited for our shops, and other business tactics. (She is a master with fabric and sewing too!)

If you are excited to participate and are not yet an iCraft seller, you can become an iCraft seller now as your main shop or as a second shop in order to particpate. You will need to have at least 5 items listed. That is just as easy as pie!

In fact, if you sign up for an iCraft shop with a seller code (1c28439c38), you will get 6 months free for your shop! ($25 one-time registration fee does apply).

Who knows? You may be one of the iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp participants earning a free shop makeover (banners and avatars), an SEO makeover too! More free things will be offered by sponsors.

IndieCEO will be providing to all bootcampers an ebook on computer maintenance for PCs for small and home businesses - a street-smart must have! 

Join us! You will definitely learn some new things and the iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp goal is for all of us to come away with new customers and sales. You will love the atmosphere at iCraft as an all-handmade selling venue. See you in the iCraft forums on Nov. 1!

Utilize Help and Information From Your Selling Venues

One of the ways online sellers can benefit from marketing and selling success strategies is through the selling venues that they use. You can find a lot of selling, promotional, and marketing tips in the venue's documentation that is very valuable!

The forums on each of the venues becomes a treasure trove of shared experiences about everything for selling online. Use it! Even if you just read, you will gain such valuable information that you can use. Read, read, read.

Today, I want to introduce the Sellers' Boot camp going on right now at iCraft.ca!

Sellers' Boot camp is a new admin-supported program started by Christine of PillowThrowDecor for sellers on iCraft.ca! Check out the iCraft.ca forum for lots of details on the Sellers' Boot camp program.

Christine not only produces the most elegant pillows for your home, but she is also a sales expert that creates energy that motivates!

She is the one that started the awesome "Odd Sock" category to move merchandise. Check out PillowThrowDecor's "Odd Sock" deals - unbelievable!

The Sellers' Boot camp program goes for 28 days with assignments for each day that will help you fill your promotional "bag of tricks" by the end of the month. The idea is to get into the habit of spending up to 30-45 minutes a day doing things that will help sales.

Retired from another career, Christine states that a part of her professional background is in sales training. She states, "As independent business people it is all about accountability. I do much better when I know there is a team of people marching along with me every day and are as committed as I am to doing assigned activities!

If you are considering trying iCraft.ca as your handmade selling venue, now is the time! Remember, if you use a referral number when you pay your one-time registration fee, you receive six months of shop fees free for an unlimited number of items! Shop fees are very reasonable. In case you need one, GalleriaLinda's referral number is: 1c28439c38!

Must go...off to boot camp!!

Know Your Selling Venues: iCraft.ca

Continuing an ongoing series of "Know Your Venues," I wanted to present the online Canadian handmade selling venue iCraft.ca. Over a year old, iCraft is beginning to make a name for itself in the online handmade community. Still new in "online business" years, it has made great strides to service both sellers and buyers in its short time.

From personal experience, I truly love this site for many reasons, one of which is that iCraft accepts only handmade items direct from the artist. No reseller items, reseller supplies, or vintage...just handmade. If you made it with your own two hands, you can sell it on iCraft. This makes for a very focused ambiance as you enter the site and targets a specific audience.

The front page of iCraft is classy. Recently, the very top banner that highlights handmade items was added and has enhanced the professionalism of the sellers. It is a flash presentation of close-up photos of featured items that changes and is designed into their own iCraft identity look.

Recently-listed items become a part of the "flash" parade in the next section. The items stay on the flash presentation for a couple of days as the flash parade pages march on to include every listed item.

Below the flash parade is another flash presentation of iCraft-selected items to be featured. The flash featured presentation changes every few seconds so a lot of great handmade items are included and they are changed out frequently to include as many sellers as possible.

Some of the features I like as a seller on iCraft include:

• One page listing form - this is a great time saver


• Select all photos before upload - another time saver


• Choice of selling in $USD or $CAD


• Clone feature - copy a listing, change a little, and is useful for listing similar items


• Each listing's status has a choice of "Live," "Reserve," or "On Hold"


• The reserve feature is genius. You can place an item on reserve and send a link to your customer - no one else sees it so there is no stressing about someone else purchasing it


• No restrictions on tagging - tag away for those key words that would best suit your item - any number of them


• For vacation mode, you just put all items on hold


• Ability to bump up your item in the searches by editing the listing - this is free


• Ability to "relist" your item so it shows up in the "just listed" flash parade - this is free


• No other fees other than your monthly fee - iCraft has several very reasonable price plans available - if you are a US seller, be sure to convert the CAD to USD - right now it is a little less in $USD but the exchange rate does change from day to day


• If you are not able to purchase a paid plan, you can have full access to the site, a shop, and are able to have 5 live listings for free - you may set up as many as you want in your back office and rotate a selected group of 5 live listing if you wish


• iCraft referral promotion - this is Win/Win for both! Once you pay your registration fee through a referral, YOU receive 6 free months - to benefit, you must use a referral code. GalleriaLinda's referral code is 1c28439c38

Things iCraft is working on that I miss and can't wait to be rolled out include a shop widget and expanded shop stats. Included now are views of shop visits and views of individual item. These features are in the works.

iCraft has impressed me with their methodical planning and roll out. Features rolled out work the first time and this goes a long way with me.

As a marketing professional, I understand that it is easier to get to your target audience if you know who it is and where to find them. To market to only those who love handmade makes marketing much easier! I see ways they promote the site. Using Twitter, each listing is automatically tweeted. How great is that? They are also on IndiePublic, Facebook, Kaboodle, TeamSugar, and Flickr. You can read some of iCraft's featured articles online here.

iCraft is recommended from my positive experience as a seller on the site. It is worth a look if you are interested in a selling venue for handmade.